Shelf · Fire & pan · Medium heat
Browning butter
Cooking butter past melted until the milk solids in it toast to golden brown.
- The temperature band
- The pan · 120 to 160 °C
- The time
- About 4 min
Why it works
Butter is fat, water and milk solids. The water boils off first, and only then can the solids climb past browning temperature and toast — which is why nothing happens for a while and then everything happens at once.
The tell
The loud sputtering of boiling water goes quiet, the foam collapses, and brown flecks appear on the bottom with a smell of hazelnuts.
How it fails
Once the water is gone the temperature runs away in seconds. Pour it into a cool bowl the instant it smells nutty — off-white flecks that go black are burnt, and burnt butter is bitter throughout.
In the app, the card opens on the recipe step that names it, with the tell drawn.
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